The Ghost [Marvel | Steve Rogers]

Chapter 18

New York City, USA

Spring 2015

The view out over New York City really was quite beautiful, especially as daylight was turning to evening. But Nadine barely noticed. She didn't notice that the building around her seemed made purely to take advantage of the view afforded by its height over the rest of the city, the upper floors a glass and metal work of modern architectural art.

She had barely even glanced out outside, or if she had, she hadn't given it much consideration. No, as she sat without moving a muscle, ankles crossed and hands folded neatly in her lap, her gaze fixed rather inadvertently on the duffle lying next to the cream-coloured couch she sat on. But she wasn't really seeing that either.

She was seeing the key left hanging from the lock on the door of their apartment. And the familiar backpack tossed carelessly across the hall. The phone lying forgotten on the floor with its dark screen cracked. The scuff-marks on the worn, weathered hardwood floor.

It had all pointed to one thing.

Upon slipping away from the Avengers, Nadine had raced back to Vienna with single-minded focus. She hadn't even bothered to stop at her Workshop first. She didn't disarm. She didn't change out of her Ghost catsuit. She didn't stop.

She just went home.

She couldn't stop moving, she couldn't focus on anything but getting home, getting her daughter and getting them both far away. The only thing on her mind had been Nina, because with the fear and trepidation burning through Nadine, she simply couldn't focus on anything else. For some reason—she had refused to contemplate what that reason might be, though part of her whispered that she already knew—Baron von Strucker had wanted her daughter and needed Nadine out of the way so he could get at her.

But the instant she had reached the little apartment they shared, Nadine had frozen with terror. Everything froze. Time seemed to stop even as her blood turned to hard, burning ice in her veins. The dispassionate spy in her had taken in everything with a cool, calculating eye. Her maternal side on the other hand...with a hoarse cry of rage, Nadine's fist had violently ripped a hole in the wall.

But it was nothing compared to the way Nadine had felt like her own insides had been shredded.

They'd taken Nina.

She had been too late.

Strucker had her daughter.

And Strucker was working with Katerina.

The Ghost and the Mother in her had merged in that moment, and both wanted blood. Lots of blood.

It was only then that she'd retreated to her Workshop. She'd spent the next few hours finding everything she could, drawing on every contact she had, every resource, to find every trace of intel on Baron Wolfgang von Stucker and Katerina Zhirova.

What she found was not promising. If her contacts were right, Stucker's hideaway fortress was just that, a fortress. Not that it dampened the impulse vibrating furiously through her to storm the gates regardless and get her little girl back no matter the cost.

But the part of her that was still able to think rationally knew she couldn't infiltrate or attack the base alone, no matter how good she was at what she did. It was simply too well secured and there were too many variables for a successful infiltration, meaning the risks to Nina were far too great...unless she had backup. It meant she needed help.

And despite everything, even after all these years and everything she'd done, there was only one person Nadine felt she could possibly hope to trust.